ILLUSTRATION OF PLATE. Crown Imperial and Turk's Cap Lilies.- Lily of the Valley. You have the power to restore me to happiness. Will you say no, dear, When soft and low, dear, Love pleads for love, which you only can give? Will you then fly me? Can you deny me? One little "yes" would allow me to live. Care hovers o'er me, Clouds, wild and storiny, Darken before me--but one smile of thine, Softly can raise, love, Hope's sunny rainbow-bright and benign! F. S. . REWARD OF VIRTUE. A GARLAND OF ROSES. Let us crown ourselves with roses ere they be withered. AT Salency, in France, there is a festival of roses, instituted by St. Medard, bishop of Noyon. There is an annual assemblage of young persons of both sexes, who elect for their queen of the day that maiden who is most worthy (and her worth must consist in the practice of social and domestic virtues); then they crown her amid loud rejoicings, and with solemn ceremony. The simple splendour of those flowers, which are the crown of innocence, is at once its reward, encouragement, and emblem. It is a gentle ambition, whose utmost aim is a garland of roses. Roses seem to have been used in garlands among the ancient Egyptians; for we read that when Ptolemy and Cleopatra entertained Cesar, and the noble Romans who attended him did With wreaths of nard the guests the ir temples bind, RowE's Lucan. Yes! thou shalt wear The wreath we are merrily braiding, The beautiful roses of spring. Amid the hair, Thy forehead of snow o'ershadowing, That steals to thy cheek as we sing! For thee we twine For who could so gracefully wear it, Is lovely and pure as the rose? The wreath is thine And the happiness - each of us share it; No envy can mar thy repose! RICHES. F. S. O. CORN. We are assured by botanists that corn is nowhere found in its primitive state. It seems to have been confided by Providence to the care of man, with the use of fire, to secure to him the sceptre of the earth. With corn and with fire, all other gifts may be dispensed with or acquired. With corn alone we could nourish every domestic animal which affords flesh for our sustenance, shares our labours, and is in various ways serviceable to us. The pig, the hen, the duck, the pigeon, the ass, the sheep, the goat, the horse, the cow, the cat, and the dog; each renders him something in return for his care. We receive from each, according to nature, either eggs or milk, bacon or wool, various meats, or services. Corn is the first bond of society, because its culture and preparation for our use require great labour and reciprocal services. From its inest mable value, the ancients called the good Ceres the legislatrix. There are occasions when food is much more highly esteemed than the possession of riches. An Arab, wandering in the desert, had not tasted food for the space of two days, and saw that he had reason to apprehend famine. In passing near a well, where the caravans stopped, he perceived a little sack on the sand. He took it up, saying, "God be praised, it is, I think, a little flour." He hastened to open the sack, but at the sight of its contents, he cried, "How unfortunate I am! it is only some gold powder!" We shall extract from that delightful work, Howitt's "Book of the Seasons," a slight sketch of the harvest in England. "The harvest is a time for universal gladness of the heart. Nature has completed her most important operations. She has ripened her best fruits, and a thousand hands are ready to reap them with joy. It is a gladdening sight to stand upon some eminence, and behold the yellow hues of harvest amid the dark relief of hedges and trees, to see the shocks standing thickly in a land of peace; the partly-reaped fields and the clear cloudless sky shedding over all its lustre. There is a solemn splendour, a mellowness and maturity of beauty, thrown over the landscape. The wheat-crops shine on the hills and slopes, as Wordsworth expresses it, 'like golden shields cast down from the sun.' For the lovers of solitary rambles, for all who desire to feel the pleasures of a thankful heart, and to participate in the happiness of the simple and the lowly, now is the time to stroll abroad. They will find beauty and enjoyment spread abundantly before them. They will find the mowers sweeping down the crops of pale barley, every spiked ear of which, so lately looking up bravely at the sun, is now bent downward in a modest and graceful curve, as if abashed at his ardent and incessant gaze. They will find them cutting down the rustling oats, each followed by an attendant rustic who gathers the swath into sheaves from the tender green of the young clover, which, commonly sown with oats to constitute the future crop, is now showing itself luxuriantly. But it is in the wheat-field that all the jollity, and gladness, and picturesqueness, of harvest are concentrated. Wheat is more particularly the food of man. Barley affords him a wholesome but much-abused potation; the oat is welcome to the homely board of the hardy mountaineers, but wheat is especially and everywhere the 'staff of life.' To reap and gather it in, every creature of the hamlet is assembled. The farmer is in the field, like a rural king amid his people: Around him ply the reaper band With lightsome heart and eager hand, "The labourer, old or young, is there to collect what he has sown with toil, and watched in its growth with pride; the dame has left her wheel and her shady cottage, and, with sleevedefended arms, scorns to do less than the best of them; the blooming damsel is there, adding her sunny beauty to that of universal nature; the boy cuts down the stalks which overtop his head; children gleam among the shocks; and even the unwalkable infant sits propped with sheaves, and plays with the stubble, and With all its twined flowers. Such groups are often seen in the wheat-field as deserve the immortality of the pencil. There is something, too, about wheat-harvest which carries back the mind and feasts it with the pleasures of antiquity. The sickle is almost the only implement which has descended from the olden times in its pristine simplicity - to the present Four, neither altering its form, nor becoming obsolete, amid all the ft shions and improvements of the world. It is the same now as it was in those scenes of rural beauty which the scripture history, without any laboured description, often by a single stroke, presents so livingly to the imagination, as it was when tender thoughts passed Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home |